Pace Environmental Notes, the weblog of the Pace University School of Law’s Environmental Collection, is a gateway to news, recent books and articles, information resources, and legal research strategies relevant to the fields of environmental, energy, land use, animal law and other related disciplines.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

During the past year, the Environmental Protection Agency has increased the number of its criminal investigators nationwide to more than 200 in compliance with the 1990 Pollution Prosecution Act. Many practitioners still have questions about criminal investigations and how decisions are made concerning whether and who to charge, as well as what their client should do if the client discovers evidence of potentially criminal conduct. Some of these issues are dealt with in formal policies, while others are a matter of practice after decades of developing environmental crimes cases.

In this 90-minute webinar, Bruce Pasfield, a partner in Alston & Bird LLP, environment and land use practice group, and Kris Dighe, assistant chief for the Department of Justice’s Environmental Crimes Section will discuss key issues that often arise in environmental crimes investigations and cases. The webinar is designed to help you:

■Understand how environmental crimes cases come to the attention of DOJ and EPA■Learn about the factors taken into consideration in determining whether to prosecute an environmental violation criminally, civilly, or through EPA’s administrative processes ■Identify elements of the most common federal criminal environmental violations and become aware of the tools available to government investigators■Gain insight about what a company should do if it learns of a violation prior to the government’s initiation of a criminal investigation and how to manage the corporate response to a criminal investigation■Make informed decisions regarding litigation strategies including whether to waive attorney client privilege in making disclosures to the government, how to address e-discovery issues, and how to manage parallel proceedings■Strategically manage whistle-blower allegations and understand the pitfalls of self-reporting■Craft strategies to negotiate with DOJ and EPA